Russia (bbabo.net), - During periods of historical turning points, global changes in the conditions of human existence, geopolitical conflicts, value-based understanding of new problems often turns out to be more important than socio-economic approaches.
I. Kant wrote about this back in the 18th century, reflecting on the conflicts between ethics and civilizational processes. In the 60s of the nineteenth century, the concept of "value" was introduced into philosophical science by the German scientist Rudolf Hermann Lotze. And soon this concept itself broke out of the bounds of philosophical studies, entering the lexical use not only of representatives of the humanities and natural knowledge, but also of statesmen, practicing politicians of various levels.
“Will it not turn out that the “universal” revolution of the globe, that is, globalization and global standards, will cause in Japan the initial changes in the identity of the Japanese, the loss of their inherent views on the state and adherence to it, blind adherence to the principles of Western civilization with its “law of the jungle”? Will the Japanese add wealth, strength, and other symbols of personal prosperity to their identity traits?" Karibe Yoshihito, author of the groundbreaking study Traditional Japanese Identity: From Ancient Times to the Age of Globalization, expresses the same concern about the loss of the nation's cultural code as his Russian colleagues, who again began to actively engage in this issue in the 2000s.
It is important to note that the problem of the preservation and existence of traditional values in the last third of the 20th century and the first decades of the 21st century is becoming relevant for many countries that have felt the powerful impact of globalization. And not only in the East - in China, India, Japan, Korea, and other countries of the Asian continent - but also in the West, primarily in France, where the preservation and promotion of the national language and national culture has long been the most important tool in the struggle for national interests. This problem is relevant in Great Britain and the USA, where the upholding of traditional values for these countries - primarily in the social sphere - has become an integral part of domestic political life, which is especially evident during elections at all levels.
The "new conservatism" in the US and Great Britain in the 1970s was a reaction to the youth revolt of the second half of the 1960s, when the "sociocultural revolution" encroached on the foundations and values of bourgeois society. A change in public sentiment brought to power two bright conservative political leaders - Margaret Thatcher in the UK and Ronald Reagan in the USA, who in the 1980s personified politicians who managed to combine neoliberalism in the economy and sociocultural traditionalism, largely based on the foundation of the values of the 19th century. centuries and religious foundations.
It is no coincidence that M. Thatcher defended the strengthening of the traditional family, considering it the backbone of British statehood, speaking out against non-traditional sexual relations. In particular, article 28 of the Local Self-Government Act, adopted in 1988, was directed against propaganda of homosexuality, including in schools. And in the 21st century, the protection of the traditional family becomes an essential element of the pre-election discussions in the UK and the US. Most Republican candidates oppose same-sex marriage, same-sex couples adopting children, and so on. The opinion of prominent Republican Mitt Romney, expressed during the 2012 election campaign, that "marriage is a sacred union between a man and a woman" was shared by tens of millions of Americans.
The protection of traditional values is determined primarily by the need to preserve the cultural code of the nation, national identity, which is associated with the individual image of a particular people, the natural desire of ethnic groups to gain historical immortality.
Heightened attention to the protection of traditional values arises during modernization changes, when it is necessary to balance the speed of changes in economic, technological or socio-cultural reality. This has happened more than once in the history of Russia - suffice it to recall the church schism of the Russian Orthodox Church in the middle of the 17th century, the reforms of the entire way of Russian life in the era of Peter I, the abolition of serfdom by Alexander II in 1861 and, finally, the era of revolutions of the early 20th century, culminating in the October Revolution . The ongoing dialogue between Slavophiles and Westernizers, whose origins are rooted in Russian history, acquired new, sometimes deeply dramatic features in the 20th century.Due to the fact that the Soviet statehood positioned itself primarily as a modernist project focused on the creation of a "new man" and a new society, declared "proletarian internationalism" as one of the most important elements of the ideology, the topic of traditional values for a long time was considered almost counter-revolutionary . Only by the mid-1930s - largely due to the aggravation of the international situation - did the words "patriot" and "patriotism" return to the ideological lexicon, which were previously considered to belong to the Whites. At the same time, historical faculties are being returned to universities. Examples of national history and culture are used for political purposes of consolidating Soviet society. It is noteworthy that in the Decree of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, devoted to historical issues, they criticize "non-recognition of the adoption of Christianity as a progressive fact, incorrect coverage of the role of Alexander Nevsky, lack of recognition of the positive role of Bohdan Khmelnitsky, exaggeration of the organization of peasant uprisings."
The Great Patriotic War with a new - truly tragic force - forced us to turn to the heroic images of Russian history. The figures of Alexander Nevsky, Kutuzov, Suvorov expanded the boundaries of the past, depriving it of ideological limitations. A new understanding of traditional values for the Soviet people took shape precisely during the Great Patriotic War. But the Soviet ideology in its Stalinist version took revenge in the era of the struggle against cosmopolitanism, when the adjective "Soviet" began to be added to the noun "patriotism".
The protection of traditional values is determined primarily by the need to preserve the cultural code of the nation
The deep social need to preserve traditional values manifests itself in the USSR in the 60s of the last century, when such outstanding writers as Vasily Belov, Fedor Abramov, Valentin Rasputin, Viktor Astafiev and other representatives of the so-called village prose came to literature. The beginning of their active work coincided with the creation of the All-Russian Society for the Protection of Historical and Cultural Monuments, headed by Pavel Korin, Leonid Leonov, Pyotr Baranovsky and others.
The "villagers" argued not only with representatives of "urban literature", but above all with the Soviet ideology, defending the values of the Russian peasantry, mutilated by the Soviet regime. It was the “pochvenniki” who, in the first place, did not accept the changes that began in the USSR in the first half of the 1980s. Feeling themselves the main guardians of traditional values, they sharply opposed the new economic policy declared by B. Yeltsin and E. Gaidar after the self-dissolution of the Soviet Union. Economic and political neoliberalism was unacceptable to them. In the 1990s, the topic of developing some new national idea capable of uniting the multinational Russian people arose with particular urgency. But its artificial creation "from above" could not be successful. It always takes years, or even decades, of a successful social life for its organic birth. But the question of national Russian identity has not disappeared.
One of the first Russian spiritual leaders at the very beginning of this century, His Holiness Patriarch Kirill, at that time Metropolitan of Smolensk and Kaliningrad, drew attention to the problem of traditional values - without denying the construction of a liberal economy and democratic state institutions, he believed that they should be balanced by fundamental ones for Russia values in education, family relations, public life, strengthening the position of the Russian Orthodox Church.
Since 2007, President of the Russian Federation V.V. Putin, arguing that it is Russia in the modern world that acts as the custodian of not only national, but also pan-European values. Speaking at the opening of the Eurasian Women's Forum on October 14, 2021, he, in particular, said: "Of course, with the absolute need to ensure the freedoms of every person, including the freedom of self-identification, nevertheless, I am still convinced that traditional family values - this is the most important moral support and the key to successful development both in the present and in the future. It was V.V. Putin proposed to include in the new version of the Constitution of the Russian Federation the wording that marriage is "a union between a man and a woman." The theme of preserving traditional Russian values also found its place in the Address of the President of the Russian Federation to the people of Russia on February 24, 2022.
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